guess where all the research money goes these days ...The cruise ship image in the article looks very convincing. I know that pixels for the sake of pixels is not the aim of MF, but at some point one does wonder whether MF buyers are getting value for money.

Certainly the phone sized sensors are going to push the technology of image capture forward, whether they will replace a traditional camera is hard to say, as the notion of serious photography is somewhat intertwined with a larger "setup."

The MFD debate has usually mentioned a megapixel advantage so I think it is fair to consider that as part of any comparison to other formats.

The other one, the 32MP ISOCELL Bright GD1, seems to be about 6.5mm diagonal, 1/2.7" — a more typical phone sensor size.

If this 2x2 binning to 12MP [resp. 8MP] for low light and cropping for zoom works well, this "swarm of tiny pixels" might be a reasonable approach for pocketable cameras.

P. S. Both Sony and Samsung use a 4x4 CFA:RRGGRRGGGGBBGGBB(Sony call this "Quad Bayer"; Samsung calls it "Tetracell")So the sensors are in a sense only "12MP color, 48MP luminosity". I wonder how well this works in practice; standard Bayer CFAs already have lower color resolution than luminosity, but so far that gap seems to mesh fairly well with how our eyes work.